Creteil Women's Film Festival
March 27 - April 1 (France)

The Days Between (In den Tag Hinein) the first feature by writer-director Maria Speth of Germany, won the Grand Prize at the 23rd International Festival of Women's Films. The visually precise account of a young woman juggling a dead-end job and two young suitors radiates a cumulative power one wouldn't expect from a slightly aloof tale of urban alienation. At age 33, Speth appears to be a full-blown talent, with a sharp eye for composition and a feel for modern life as haunting as it is assured.

At the awards ceremony on March 31st, special mentions were shared by One's Own Shadow (Sobstvennaya Tyen) by Olga Narutskaya of Russia and Time's Up!, a Manhattan-set comedy written and directed by Chile-born Cecilia Barriga.

One's Own Shadow keenly portrays the problematic friendship between two women whose lives have left them too intertwined to ever be free of one another, like it or not. The film takes the effective tack of portraying the past in color and the present in black and white, instead of the other way around.

Time's Up! is a bracing indie comedy about an Argentine shrink who treats her patients in the back of a mobile home as it cruises the colorful streets of New York. The main character is contemplating a return visit to Argentina where, as flashbacks gradually reveal, traumatic incidents gave her good reason to be as screwed up as her clientele. Although the premise sounds serious, this is a consistently amusing comedy full of striking and original touches, marred only by budget constraints (pic was shot in record time and on DV). Barriga is definitely a talent to watch.

The Creteil Fest, the world's largest devoted to films made by women, ran March 23-April 1st, with separate competitions devoted to fiction features, feature documentaries and short films from France and abroad. The festival's guest of honor was Maria Schneider, the curvaceous and headstrong force of nature who forever made her mark in Last Tango in Paris and Profession: Reporter (aka 'The Passenger"). But Paris-born Schneider, who turned 49 during the fest, has appeared in nearly 50 films, 6 of which she singled out for Creteil.

A survivor who freely admits to having wasted 7 years due to drug use, Schneider will next play Isabelle Adjani's sister in the fourth feature by Laetitia Masson, opposite Sami Frey. Schneider makes no secret of her indignation that actors can find roles worthy of their talents whatever their age or physique, but actresses tend to hit a professional desert between babe-hood and playing wizened grannies. Schneider speaks English,

French and Italian and has even acted "a little bit in Arabic" - so, all you screenwriters, this is your chance to tailor a part for a unique performer who feels she's never been better at her craft.

The fest's other major theme was Heroines of the 20th Century, an occasion to salute female trailblazers in aviation, athletics and politics, with a special nod to women who fought in the Resistance during WWII.

OTHER AWARDS

The Youth Jury gave its top award to Love Juice by Shindo Kaze of Japan. What might seem close-to-vapid to mature viewers obviously spoke to the younger crowd. (Writer/director Kaze was born in 1976). Two young women share a small apartment in Tokyo. Their friendship is on the cusp of becoming unbearable for Chinatsu, who has fallen in love with her straight roommate Kyoko. As the two young women struggle to sort out the vagaries of sex and love, of casual romance and serious heartache, a pair of goldfish get stuck with Metaphor Duty.

The French Association of Women Journalists gave its 16th annual prize to Stolen Generation, Darlene Johnson's documentary account of how the Australian government tried to stamp out aboriginal culture by stealing aborigine children from their families. An honorary mention went to American Alix Lambert's docu The Mark of Cain, about the mutating art of Russian prison tattoos.

The feature Audience Prize went to Secret Society directed by German-born, UK-educated Imogen Kimmel. A polished comedy with a hefty cast,Secret Society follows the unlikely adventures of Daisy, a sweet but more-than-chubby young woman who takes a job in a vegetable packing factory run by a woman as wise as she is overweight. Daisy is asked to join the title group, an all-female Sumo wrestling circle. Sworn to secrecy, she's unable to share her new pursuits with her trim, adoring and unemployed husband. Rarely have so many ultra-plump actresses bared all or nearly all for the camera. The result is respectful of women whose Botero-like forms are usually the brunt of nasty remarks.

The short film Audience Prize in the national competition went to French director Laurence Attali for her documentary set in Senegal Baobab. A delighted Attali suggested that a baobab seed be planted on the concrete esplanade outside the festival hall.

The short film Audience Prize in the international competition went to Svetlana Cvetko for her debut docu No War. A willowy live wire, Cvetko bounded on stage in joyous disbelief to explain that never in a million years had it crossed her mind that she might win a prize. A photographer and cinematographer based in San Francisco, Cvetko was raised in Yugoslavia. As her film was one of a handful shown just under the wire before a bomb threat chased thousands of fest-goers out of Creteil's Maison des Arts on Monday night March 26th, Cvetko was doubly astonished to have racked up enough votes to win the award.

The Beaumarchais Screenwriting Prize prize went to the throroughly remarkable 30-minute short Tous à table by Ursula Meier, a Belgian/Swiss co-production that also won the Audience Prize in Clermont-Ferrand in February. A situation that could be deadly boring is absolutely riveting and uncomfortably hilarious as a group of friends celebrate one guy's 40th birthday. The group, seated at a table, has been eating and drinking and shmoozing with casual abandon, when one guest proposes a riddle concerning the progress through the jungle of three ants. Solving the riddle becomes a strange catalyst for verbal and emotional show-downs that soon have friends and couples at each other's throats, testing limits, pouting and/or dripping contempt. The camera is so fluid and the acting so unaffected the viewer can't help but feel like a fly on the wall - and quite happy to be a fly and not one of the people portrayed, at that. Just when you think that blasted riddle will never be solved, along comes the solution, in a coda as liberating at the arrival of the Allied Forces in Paris on Aug 25, 1944. A funny miracle in a compact package, this is one of the oddest and best shorts in recent memory.

The Canal Plus Prize went to the comic Franco-Brazillian short As Mulheres Choradeiras (The Keeners) by Jorane Castro in which three professional mourners are accused of swiping the deceased.

The Feature Documentary Award honored Jazzwomen, whose director Gabriella Morandi of Italy said she was especially heartened because "I've had a hard time deciding it's okay to be an artist." She thanked her producer for his support during five years of hard work assembling information on the lives of female jazz greats and lesser known women musicians.

The Film Student Jury from campus 12 of the Paris university system gave its prize to the Slovenian short F by Janja Glogovac. Glogovac, who had begun her studies at Prague's film school during the war in Yugoslavia, tells the story of young Yugoslavian women trying to find themselves under dicey conditions.

The remainder of the ten competition films in brief: Dokhtaran Khorshid (Daughters of Sun) by Iranian director Maryam Shahriar is the draining, gorgeously photographed but ultimately hollow account of young women forced to weave Persian rugs in exchange for paltry wages under miserable conditions. By starring an actress with a shaved head passing as a boy, the film bucks official filmmaking taboos. (Iran being a country where women are supposed to cover their heads and a woman is certainly not supposed to consider marrying another woman - even if she thinks the girl in question is a boy.) But all this bravery amounts to little in the unrelenting climate of textbook opression.

Guony Halldorsdottir's involving costume drama The Honor of the House (Ungfruin goda og Husid) is a melodrama set in Iceland and Denmark early in the last century. As family sagas go, this one's a doozie. With unwed mothers, scheming sibblings, illicit affairs, class conflicts, spoiled reputations and thwarted romances to spare, this is a meticulously wrought showcase for talented actors and production designers.

The English filmmaking collective Amber Film Production offers up the stern but affecting antidote to Billy Elliott in Like Father, the collective's 9th fiction feature. Three generations in a former coal mining town attempt to buck the crasser aspects of redevelopment in their lifelong home. Non-professional actors in the leads do a fine job as the obstacles pile up. At age 70, Czech director Drahomira Vihanova ( The Pilgrimage of the Students Peter and Jacob) essays the free-wheeling but unrelentingly intense story of two young men who witness a murder in a gypsy community and deal with the burden in different ways. Local color and prolonged emotional anguish are the major by-products of this extended pilgrimage.

Taiwanese director Singing Chen investigates the lives of Taipei's homeless population in Bundled (Who Jia A-ming-la). The garbage dumps on the outskirts of town are a spectacular backdrop to the perambulations of an older man who takes his precarious life as it comes. In Loving Greta Garbo, docu-maker Lena Einhorn of Sweden tackles the twisted tale of Greta Garbo's passionate but problematic friendship with the fascinating Mercedes De Acosta. On April 15, 2000 (ten years after Garbo's death) a box containing the late actress's letters to De Acosta was opened. Alas, Einhorn was unable to secure permission to quote from the letters or to use clips from Garbo's films. A resourceful filmmaker with an excellent sense of humor and a taste for irony, Einhorn nevertheless speculates about the barbed tug-of-war that united and divided the two headstrong personalities across two continents and over several decades.

Lisa Nesselson

Variety magazine's Paris-based film reviewer.

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